Government task forces come and go with varying degrees of fanfare and mixed records of success, but there’s reason to be optimistic about a new group of 15 or 20 people who will begin meeting this month to explore long-term solutions to store millions of pounds of radioactive waste from the closed San Onofre nuclear plant. If nothing else, the task force focuses attention on an issue in dire need of it.

Storing 3.6 million pounds of spent fuel behind a sea wall on a site 100 feet from the north San Diego County coast between the Pacific Ocean and Interstate 5, where 8.4 million people live within 50 miles, is a short-term solution badly in need of a Plan B. Canisters of spent fuel began to be moved from cooling pools to dry storage about a year ago, six years after the plant was shut down. But only 29 of 73 50-ton canisters were transferred before the process was put on hold in August after one briefly got stuck in transit, the third in a series of canister mishaps.

New Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, announced the formation of the task force last week, and appropriately earned praise from plant majority owner Southern California Edison — and from watchdogs, including former City Attorney Michael Aguirre, who have raised concerns about on-site storage. An Edison spokesman told a reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune that Levin and the utility “share common ground” in a desire to move the waste. Likewise, Aguirre lauded Levin’s “commitment to move the waste to a safer location.”

In mid-November, shortly after Levin’s election, the San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board bemoaned “the lethargic way” Congress and the federal government have responded to the pressing need to develop a long-term storage plan and wrote that Levin should lead on the issue. We’re reassured to see him begin to address the problem and use his newfound influence to seek permanent solutions.

It’s a complex issue that merits continual pressure or the hazardous waste won’t leave San Diego.